In the 14 years since its Tony Award-winning stage debut, and 11 years since it’s last stop in the metro area, the poignant messages of “Kinky Boots” are still resonant.
It’s also still a helluva good time.
Amidst its abundance of big laughs, glitzy production numbers and impressive feats of dancing in thigh-high red stilettos, the musical adaptation of the 2005 British film — at Detroit’s Fisher Theatre through Sunday, Feb. 8 — remains more than just the story of a drag queen in London who helps a young man in Northampton reinvent and save his family’s multi-generation shoe business. With a book by Harvey Fierstein and songs by Cyndi Lauper, It semi soft-sells concepts of inclusion and acceptance, self-realization, determination — and faith. We watch Lola open the minds of Charlie Price and his factory team while also finding common ground and achieving some closure for his own life issues.
Heavy stuff — if you want it to be. And if you just want to kick up your heels and just, as per the song, say an exuberant “Yeah!,” “Kinky Boots” has that for you, too.
The best news is that this touring edition of the show — which won six Tonys, including Best Musical and Best Score for Lauper — features as tight a cast as you’d want, a dialed-in ensemble whose timing is spot-on throughout comic and dramatic moments alike. The actors portray relationships that feel remarkably genuine and relatable, and not always predictable, and they’re also effective when it’s time to break the proverbial fourth wall and bring the audience directly into the party.
“Kinky Boots” always rests on its Lola, of course, and in Omari Collins, aka Scarlett D’ Von Du, the character is in fine hands. This is Collins’ seventh run in the show, and he inhabits Lola with a joy and familiarity drawn from that experience but also with the energy of a first-night performance. Convincing in both boots and boxing gloves, he deftly balances the back story and inner demons with proverbial joie de vivre — and nails every one of his songs, including the torchy “Hold Me in Your Heart” and the heartstring-tugging “Not My Father’s Son” duet with Charlie.
And while “Book of Mormon” veteran Noah Silverman is not overpowering as Charlie, he capably traces that character’s growth and rocks his own spotlight moment, “The Soul of a Man.”
There isn’t a weak link in the rest of the cast, and Jason Daniel Chacon stands out as Don, the factory foreman who experiences his own enlightenment and delivers one of the show’s funniest surprises during the “Raise You Up/Just Be” finale. Lola’s drag queen crew the Angels, meanwhile, are divinely exuberant, and you’d be hard-pressed to find more triumphant experiences anywhere in the stage world than romps such as “Land of Lola,” “Sex Is in the Heel” and “Everybody Say Yeah.”
You may, or may not, come out of “Kinky Boots” with a better sense of “What a Woman Wants.” But you’ll definitely be uplifted and entertained — and maybe have a different view of extravagant footwear.
So don’t dismiss “Kinky Boots” as a trifle, but don’t let
“Kinky Boots” runs through Sunday, Feb. 8, at the Fisher Theatre, 3011 W. Grand Blvd., Detroit. 313-872-1000 or atgtickets.com.
